Saturday, July 17, 2010

"The 4 Ingredient Vegan" By Maribeth Abrams with Anne Dinshah

The 4 Ingredient Vegan By Maribeth Abrams with Anne Dinshah  



Are you on the go, in a hurry but need hearty vegan meals for your family? A new vegan who needs some simple recipes to impress your family and friends? A beginner cook who needs some clever dishes to make you look like a better cook than you are? An obsessive/compulsuve who can only eat meals with 4 ingredients?
If you answered "yes" to any of these questions then The 4 Ingredient Vegan is the must-have book for you.

The 4 Ingredient Vegan was written by Maribeth Abrams with Anne Dinshah.
From the back of the book:
"Mary Beth Abrams, MS, is a certifeid nutritional consultant, vegan culinary educator and the author of the cookbook Tofu 1-2-3."
"Anne Dinshah is a lifetime vegan and the author of Healthy Hearty Helpings, a vegan cookbook for busy people who like to eat."

My hat is off to you ladies. As an adult and especially as a vegan, being able to prepare my own meals has been key to my dietary sucess. The 4 Ingredient Vegan will instill some basic cooking skills that you can build on. Sure, you can count on restaurants and having other people cook for you for a while but sooner or later you will be stuck, on your own with nothing but a supermarket and a (perhaps not-well stocked) kitchen. Having some basic cooking skills will save your vegan ass, believe me!

The difference between The 4 Ingredient Vegan and some other cookbooks with more complicated recipes is like the difference between the Ramones and Fleetwood Mac. The 4 Ingredient Vegan's recipes are a whole lot of short songs with a satisfying result, Some other cookbook's recipes are more like trying to see how many notes one could jam into each bar of a 12 minute song whilst having a secret affair with one's lead vocalist.

The 4 Ingredient Vegan is a great cookbook for a beginner or an expert cook. Filled with clever ingredients like purple sweet potatoes and vegan marshmallow creme and crammed with clever things to do with ordinary ingredients that you will have around if you've been a cook-at-home vegan for any amount of time and that you should be able to find easily at your local supermarket, Asian grocery or Natural Foods store.
The preface, "Why Vegan" goes over some very compelling reasons why one would become a vegan:
"Adopting a vegan diet can be a giant step toward improving your health and well-being. It can also be divinely satisfying in terms of the wonderful tastes and textures that plant foods provide. Meat is rarely prepared without ingredients from the plant kingdom to improve its flavor, such as garlic, onions, herbs, and a wide array of vegetable-based sauces. These same delicious flavorings can be used with plant foods to create endlessly exciting yet familiar flavors."


Chapter 1 "Getting Started" has a great section on stocking your kitchen. Each item listed is defined and they give you a clue as to where you might buy some. You might need to get to a supermarket and buy some vegan sour cream, vegan mayonnaise. Or you might click on those links and learn to make your own. It doesn't take as long as you might think. I don't believe vegan marshmallow creme exists. Someone prove me wrong and send me a jar so I can make this Vegan Fudge recipe they include!

Chapter 2 covers Morning Meals, with breakfast and brunch tempters like Cashew French Toast and the Morning Muffin Sandwich.
Chapter 3 is all about Beverages, with a variety of smoothie and cold drink recipes,
Chapter 4 is Soups including a red cabbage soup made with ginger ale!
Chapter 5 is Salads. This section includes some yummy sandwich spreads. I want to try the Tempeh Chicken salad and the Chickpea-of-the-Sea sandwich fillers.
Chapter 6, Dips, Spreads, Savory sauces includes, pasta sauces, spreads for bread and pates for dipping.
Chapter 7, is all Main dishes which look like quick and easy comfort food plus some new dishes to challenge your pallette. I can't wait to try the Roasted Eggplant and Pesto Roulade!
Chapter 8 covers Side Dishes, many of which could double as main dishes. Purple Sweet Potato Pie is going to get made in my kitchen, I swear it to the skies! I might have to use yams, though.
Chapter 9, Desserts, treats, and sweet toppings covers all things decadence and dessert; Baked Pears, Chocolate covered Strawberries, Tahini Chews (which I think I might make tonight)
At the end of it all there is an Index for easy peasy reference.

I've already made the Cashew French Toast and it was FANTASTIC! It's not only a well put together vegan french toast recipe but it gives you some great tips on making perfect french toast.

As much as I love this book I want to complain about one recipe. Pickled Beets.
I quote 
"Plan ahead for this recipe, since you have to consume the entire contents of a jar of pickles before you can make it."
The book then goes on to instruct us to process the beets and put them in the jar of pickle juice. 
Ok. I have done this. I did it when I was a kid, with carrots. I still do it with the leftover pickle juice from pickles I make from scratch. My complaint is that this could have been a very good recipe with still only 4 ingredients and no directives to consume entire jars of pickles.
Four ingredient pickle recipe I just made up this second
water (doesn't count as ingredient)
vinegar
sugar (optional)
salt (doesn't count)
Spice of some sort, I don't know. Dill?
Cooked or raw veg, cut in pickle sizes go in a jar with the vinegar, water, salt, sugar, spice.
Eat a whole jar of pickles, indeed. (frowny face)

I would definitely recommend The 4 Ingredient Vegan to anyone, vegan or not, who wants to eat good food but doesn't want to spend all day with recipes that have a million ingredients and two million steps. If you don't mind canned and "store-bought" ingredients you can really pad your "Go-To" recipe file with quick, easy and impressive-looking breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert ideas from The 4 Ingredient Vegan.
This book was graciously donated to me by Book Publishing Company for review purposes. I receive no monetary compensation. The opinion given here is my own and is not coerced or paid for in any way.
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The Philosophy of Animal Rights by Tom Regan


The other animals humans eat, use in science, hunt, trap, and exploit in a variety of ways, have a life of their own that is of importance to them apart from their utility to us. They are not only in the world, they are aware of it. What happens to them matters to them. Each has a life that fares better or worse for the one whose life it is.

That life includes a variety of biological, individual, and social needs. The satisfaction of these needs is a source of pleasure, their frustration or abuse, a source of pain. In these fundamental ways, the nonhuman animals in labs and on farms, for example, are the same as human beings. And so it is that the ethics of our dealings with them, and with one another, must acknowledge the same fundamental moral principles.

At its deepest level, human ethics is based on the independent value of the individual: The moral worth of any one human being is not to be measured by how useful that person is in advancing the interest of other human beings. To treat human beings in ways that do not honor their independent value is to violate that most basic of human rights: the right of each person to be treated with respect.

The philosophy of animal rights demands only that logic be respected. For any argument that plausibly explains the independent value of human beings implies that other animals have this same value, and have it equally. And any argument that plausibly explains the right of humans to be treated with respect, also implies that these other animals have this same right, and have it equally, too.

It is true, therefore, that women do not exist to serve men, blacks to serve whites, the poor to serve the rich, or the weak to serve the strong. The philosophy of animal rights not only accepts these truths, it insists upon and justifies them.

But this philosophy goes further. By insisting upon and justifying the independent value and rights of other animals, it gives scientifically informed and morally impartial reasons for denying that these animals exist to serve us.

Once this truth is acknowledged, it is easy to understand why the philosophy of animal rights is uncompromising in its response to each and every injustice other animals are made to suffer.

It is not larger, cleaner cages that justice demands in the case of animals used in science, for example, but empty cages: not "traditional" animal agriculture, but a complete end to all commerce in the flesh of dead animals; not "more humane" hunting and trapping, but the total eradication of these barbarous practices.

For when an injustice is absolute, one must oppose it absolutely. It was not "reformed" slavery that justice demanded, not "reformed" child labor, not "reformed" subjugation of women. In each of these cases, abolition was the only moral answer. Merely to reform injustice is to prolong injustice.

The philosophy of animal rights demands this same answer - abolition - in response to the unjust exploitation of other animals. It is not the details of unjust exploitation that must be changed. It is the unjust exploitation itself that must be ended, whether on the farm, in the lab, or among the wild, for example. The philosophy of animal rights asks for nothing more, but neither will it be satisfied with anything less.

Haiku Disclaimer

This works for me now
Find your own path and never
Take advice from fools

Insprirational Vegan Quotes

1. Animals that live in the wild kill other animals in order to eat. If I also lived in the wild would it still be inhumane to kill an animal to eat?? What about if I raised chickens in my backyard and cultivated their eggs for my breakfast omelet, is this inhumane?
A: Because animal flesh and products are not needed for human nutrition killing and eating them is inhumane in any circumstances. No kind of slavery is humane no matter how well the slave is treated. You can't respect someone and then exploit her for her eggs/milk/honey.

2. Do animal rights moralists take into consideration the domestication of animals i.e. history of farming, farming as the back bone to the establishment of the first civilizations. There’s not much literature about the reasons animals have become a central part of human life?
A: History is no excuse to continue to exploit non humans. Animals are not needed for human nutrition. That is a myth perpetuated by industries which make money exploiting non human animals.

3. Is domestication against animals rights? If so, does that make having a dog or cat or horse inhumane?
A: At this time there are a lot of domesticated animals that need tending. Most domesticated animals are just that. They would not exist as we know them if not for domestication. Breeding animals for pets or for food is unnecessary and inhumane. Adopt animals, have them spayed or neutered. Give them a comfortable home where they can live out their lives without being exploited. With time the numbers of "non-food" and "food" animals will go down and eventually there will be no more domesticated food animals or pets.

Ethical veganism results in a profound revolution within the individual; a complete rejection of the paradigm of oppression and violence that she has been taught from childhood to accept as the natural order. It changes her life and the lives of those with whom she shares this vision of nonviolence. Ethical veganism is anything but passive; on the contrary, it is the active refusal to cooperate with injustice. ~Gary L. Francione

Merely by ceasing to eat meat
Merely by practicing restraint
We have the power to end a painful industry

We do not have to bear arms to end this evil
We do not have to contribute money
We do not have to sit in jail or go to
meetings or demonstrations or
engage in acts of civil disobedience
Most often, the act of repairing the world,
of healing mortal wounds,
is left to heroes and tzaddikim (holy people)
Saints and people of unusual discipline
But here is an action every mortal can
perform--surely it is not too difficult! ~Roberta Kalechofsky of Jews for Animal Rights

The ten commandments of Mother Earth

1. Thou shall love and honor the Earth for it blesses thy life and governs thy survival.
2. Thou shall keep each day sacred to the Earth and celebrate the turning of its seasons.
3. Thou shall not hold thyself above other living things nor drive them to extinction.
4. Thou shall give thanks for thy food, to the creatures and plants that nourish thee.
5. Thou shall educate thy offspring for multitudes of people are a blessing unto the Earth when we live in harmony.
6. Thou shall not kill, nor waste Earth's riches upon weapons of war.
7. Thou shall not pursue profit at the Earth's expense but strive to restore its damaged majesty.
8. Thou shall not hide from thyself or others the consequences of thy actions upon the Earth.
9. Thou shall not steal from future generations by impoverishing or poisoning the Earth.
10. Thou shall consume material goods in moderation so all may share the Earth's bounty. ~Ernest Callenbach

"This is what passes for "food" in America today: A collection of nutritionally-obliterated, hormonally-enhanced, chemically-adulterated shapes of refined whatever, all hyped up to make them seem like real food when in fact they're just agricultural byproducts devoid of any real nutrition." ~Mike Adams


"I like not eating animals. Animals are our friends and we shouldn't eat them. Animals need us to take care of them and save them. My mom cooks us vegetables and pretend hamburgers and hotdogs and chicken nuggets and they are healthy for you and taste good! I told all my friends 'you should NOT eat animals!' I hit my friend Levi because he was eating a ham sandwich and wouldn't stop. Then mom said that Levi is an animal too and we have to be nice to all animals even if they eat other animals. I said sorry to Levi, but I wish he would not eat animals anymore. I also like not eating animals because my mom says it helps the earth, like recycling." ~Jacob, 6 yrs old


You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action.~Anthony Robbins

It only takes a spark ~Daniel Andreas San Diego

Some people are still going to want to eat meat. We do agree though that vegetarianism is a healthier diet. ~David Stroud (of the American Meat Institute)

For that which befalls the sons of men befalls beasts ;
even one thing befall them: as the one dies, so dies the other. They have all one breath; so that a man has no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knows that the spirit of man goes upward, and the spirit of the beast goes downward to the earth? ~Ecclesiastes iii., 19, 20, 21.

There is no such thing as cruelty free slaughter or humane killing.
No slave is happy no matter what the owner tells you.
Go Vegan NOW!
Do it for the cows that have their babies taken away again and again for milk production.
Do it for the chickens who are de-beaked for egg production.
Do it for the pigs who have to nurse their babies on concrete floors.
Do it for the millions of humans who don't know any better.
Do it for the planet.
Do it for your health.

Do it because there is NO SUCH THING as humane slaughter.~ Judith Barnes

Auschwitz begins whenever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they're only animals.
~Theodor Adorno

If only I could so live and so serve the world that after me there should never again be birds in cages.
~Isak Dinesen (pen name of Karen Blixen), author (1885-1962)

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
~Anne Frank

If "rights" exist at all— and both feeling and usage indubitably prove that they do exist —they cannot be consistency awarded to men and denied to animals, since the same sense of justice and compassion apply in both cases.
~Henry Salt, 1892

You ask people why they have deer heads on the wall. They always say, Because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother's attractive, but I have photographs of her.
~Ellen DeGeneres

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.
~Leo Tolstoy

Raw foods create living bodies, and cooked foods create dying bodies
~Sabrina Aird, Grass Root co-owner

You say it’s my personal choice, it’s not a personal choice when you’re ruining my planet and you’re eating my friends
~ Dave Warwak

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites, or women created for men.
~ Alice Walker

Thou Shalt Not Kill
~ The Christian Bible

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy; if the world were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I wake up each morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. This makes it very hard to plan the day.
~E. B. White

Don’t want to ruin the oceans? Go vegan.
Don’t like the environmental problems of the soy industry? Go vegan.
Don’t like monoculture? Go vegan.
Don’t like the environmental problems of the petroleum industry? Go vegan.
Don’t like greenhouse gas emission? Go vegan.
Don’t like animal exploitation and cruelty? Go vegan.
Want environmental sustainability? Go vegan.
Want to feed the hungry? Go vegan.
Want to save water? Go vegan.
Want to cut air and water pollution? Go vegan.
Want to slow global warming? Go vegan.
Want to reduce the risk of heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, obesity, and cancer? Go vegan.
There is no absolutely single personal change that the average person can make that has a better impact on the environment than going vegan.
~Dan Cudahy

Honey is not vegan. It is an animal product, it came from the inside of an animal that produced it, not for you to sweeten your tea, but for a baby bee to live and grow on. Using honey or products made with beeswax are not on the vegan menu.

What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ...The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

~Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived.

How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds?

It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless,tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace.

But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches.

No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being.~Plutarch

I abhor vivisection. It should at least be curbed. Better, it should be abolished. I know of no achievement through vivisection, no scientific discovery, that could not have been obtained without such barbarism and cruelty. The whole thing is evil.~Charles Mayo (founder of the Mayo Clinic)

Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places.~Leonardo Da Vinci

DO NOT BREED OR BUY WHILE SHELTER PETS DIE!